


Endgame

by ishafel



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: M/M, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 16:04:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is a victory in its own right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endgame

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thistlerose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/gifts).



He misses Lymond a great deal when he is in France, and Lymond is in Russia, when he is in Malta and Lymond is in Scotland. When he was very drunk, once, Marthe said to him that what he loved was the ideal, not the reality. Jerott did not hit her for it, but he had wanted to. Now that Marthe is dead and Jerott is in exile, he wants it to be true.

It is not, and never will be true. He loved Gabriel once, and now he loves Lymond; it is the way he is made and there is no room in him for anything else. The place Marthe had was Lymond's by right. He would feel guilty about that if he did not suspect it was the same for Marthe, that each of them loved, in the other, what they saw of Francis Crawford of Lymond.

In Malta he is neither a knight nor a priest, only a soldier. The Spanish king is building a fleet such as there has never been, to drive the Turks out of Tripoli and out of Christendom. They are not much interested in the souls of their commanders, so long as their right arms are strong. And Jerott is a better soldier than he ever was a knight.

He drinks a great deal, without Lymond to check him. It does not affect the work he is doing. And he has a native boy that is his lover as well as his servant. It is a sin, and worse than that it is an indulgence. His name is Francois, though he is not otherwise very like Lymond, being dark-skinned and dark-eyed and very quick to smile.

He is only another substitute for something Jerott will never have, but he is better than madness. He is pliant and eager under Jerott's hands: his mouth tastes of fruit and his skin of salt, and his hands are bare of the callouses of a swordsman.

There are many things Lymond taught Jerott, but kindness never was one of them. Still, he is kinder to Francois than he ever was to Marthe. If the name his lips shape in extremity is the wrong one, at least the sound of it is the same. And there is no love in it for either of them, and no pretense of love. Only diversion, only commerce. Only Jerott, hard between the boy's legs, uncaring finally of what hole it is he fills.

And then there is Djerba. Jerott is wounded; his men are decimated, the fleet destroyed. The Knights are called back to Malta to fortify, to wait for the war to come to them. Jerott is tired of waiting and tired of war. And there is no place for him among the virtuous and virginal Knights of St. John of Malta.

He goes home. His father is dead, and his brother is an old man, suddenly, and with no sons. There is no more peace in Scotland than there was on the edge of the Ottoman Empire: the country is split between two Gods, two faiths, and square in the middle of it stands Richard Crawford and his brother Crawford of Lymond. Jerott could ride to his aid. Lymond is rebuilding St. Mary's, and could surely find a place for his old captain. He could take his brother's seat in the new Reformation Parliament. He could live in Edinburgh or London, with another catamite for a pet. Instead he takes a wife, a woman young and fair and well-bred as a man could hope for, and utterly boring. He gets her with child at once; she bears him two strong sons in two years, and by then his brother is dead and he is laird. An heir, a spare, a son for the Church and one for the Army: it is Jerott the defrocked priest who holds the title.

He learns to farm, to run an estate, to be satisfied with books and music and the occasional trip to the city and tumble with a pretty, sharp-tongued boy or two. He does not call his wife by any name but her own, and he never speaks to her of the life or the wife he once had. He is not unhappy.

When, finally, Lymond writes to him, he burns the letters unopened. If he cannot have the reality for himself, he wants no part of the ideal. He thinks that Marthe would laugh to see him now, with cow shit on his boots and inkstains on his fingers, and he does not mind. There are worse things.


End file.
